A Day In My Life

This is one of my very favorite pumpkin recipes... so yummy! Ingredients: 1 box yellow cake mix 1 can (15 oz) pumpkin puree 1 can (12 oz) evaporated milk 3 large eggs 1 1/2 cups sugar 1 tsp. cinnamon 1/2 tsp. salt 1 1/2 cups chopped pecans (the original recipe called for 1/2 cup) 1 cup butter, melted Heat oven to 350 degrees F.  Grease bottom of 9 x 13″ pan.  Mix pumpkin, milk, eggs, sugar, cinnamon, and salt.  Pour mixture into greased pan.  Sprinkle dry cake mix over pumpkin mixture and top with pecans.  Drizzle melted butter over pecans.  Bake 50-55 minutes.

We had so much fun at Avery's first birthday bash on Saturday... and I had way  too much fun planning and prepping all of the details. I decided to do a school theme. You know, like A B C and 1 2 3. Invitation: It helped that my mom is a school teacher and happened to have vintage Dick and Jane books, as well as access to a bunch of other school supplies. I knew I wanted to incorporate the milestone pictures I've been taking of Avery all year. I put a few in frames, and the rest I displayed like this: It was really easy to use pliers to twist up a wire and stick it in the apples. Each of the other tables had a simple centerpiece... I already had the Ikea  frames from Harvey's 2nd birthday party , and I spray-painted a piece of cardboard with chalkboard paint for the insert, and wrote "A" or "1" with colored chalk. I tied the balloons to a mason jar filled with magnetic letters. I added a "schedule" to our big chalkboard (...